Friday, August 12, 2016

Canada has lost its mind trying to justify ELDs

Editor’s note: OOIDA
Senior Member Johanne Couture has more than 20 years’ experience as a truck
driver pulling freight throughout the U.S. and Canada. In addition to her
service as a member of OOIDA’s board, she’s also a member of the Canadian
Council of Motor Transportation Administrators’ compliance and review board.

I am truly baffled by Canada’s latest attempt to convince
people that we need an electronic log mandate. The cost-benefit analysis, the
study that supposedly shows the benefits outweigh the costs, is nothing more
than a smoke screen.

The cost-benefit analysis for Canada’s national ELD mandate
claims the mandated use of the devices will prevent two crashes annually.
That’s two crashes, not necessarily two fatalities and not necessarily even
injuries. Just crashes.

So here we have a financially burdensome mandate, intruding
on the privacy of all mandated drivers nationally, that will potentially prevent only TWO crashes
annually?

Two crashes annually. Think about that.

Two crashes on a national level could be prevented by
rolling out the salt trucks five minutes earlier when the weather turns bad.
Or, the new Ontario MELT (Mandatory Entry Level Training) program could prevent
at least that many crashes by just training new drivers on when to get off the
road when the conditions are bad and a plow or salt truck isn’t there yet. And,
yeah, even more crashes would be prevented if we had adequate parking to get
off the road when we need to.

As you may deduce by my tone, I am absolutely shaking my
head here.

This is even more of a crock than I anticipated. Just as in
the U.S., this mandate is not about safety. Touting this as a “safety” mandate
is misleading when mandating cost and privacy infringements are taken into
account.

This mandate is about one thing, and it’s a phrase I
despise: “leveling the playing field!”

This mandate is all
about big carriers pushing for that level playing field.

If the field was level, costs would be too. They would be
the same for all truck operators. Big carriers have fuel discounts, tire discounts,
shop rate discounts, truck pricing discounts … And then they cut freight rates
and exploit owner-operators and drivers. That’s not my definition of a level
playing field.

ELDs are a fleet management tool and should not be a
national mandate to choke out small businesses with added burdensome costs.

We all know that’s what ELDs are for. And all the government
can come up with to try and justify helping big carriers steam roll the little
guy out of the industry is saying that the devices will reduce crashes – by
TWO.

There’s nothing in this mandate to benefit the drivers.

We truck drivers absolutely have to make this harsh reality
available to all the Canadian Council of Motor Transportation Administrators
members of the Committee on Compliance and Regulations and our provincial
representatives. We must bring some unbiased clarity on this ridiculous
proposal and keep Canada from bowing down to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the
Ontario Trucking Association, and other pro carrier associations.

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